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LKTTERS FROM GERMANY .
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( 268 )
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No . TX . Sir , Heidelberg . Schellino ' s philosophy first brought into repute those metaphysicoreligious speculations which have received the name of religious philosophy . His doctrines had revived the belief that philosophy would be carried at
length to its perfection , by conceiving of the natural world as existing only in the Divine Being . The author may not have intended at first to lay a foundation for Pantheism ; but his system inclosed seeds which could not fail to be quickened into religious sophisms of that kind under favouring circumstances . Many speculatists of the same class have come out of his school , without assuming , however , the name of religious philosophers . The most remarkable fact is , that a class of religious mystics , both of
Catholics and Protestants , have assumed that name , and affect to take Schelhng ' s doctrine into alliance with their own religious mysticism , in order to give it an imposing and philosophical front . All , hating in their heart the Protestant principle of the right of private judgment , in their object , and the means of accomplishing it , coalesce with Jesuitism . They would build up an absolute church authority , Protestant or Catholic , and they make war upon all philosophy , and that of their assumed patron Schelling as much as the rest ,
where it cannot be made available to their design . This is nothing l ess than to restore the darkness of the middle as : es . It professes to be a restoration of philosophy through religion . The extermination of science , through an alliance , defensive and offensive , between intolerance and mysticism , would describe it more justly . T !\ e ark of science must be carried off from Pagan hands , and then sunk in oblivion for ever . The design has
been exposed in a recent publication by Dr . C . Seebold , ( occasioned by a mystical lecture delivered at the opening of the University at Munich , ) remarkable for clearness and vigour of expression . It is entitled , *• Philosophy and Religious Philosophers . " Connected with the particular object , it contains many passages of great general interest . I shall condense a part of what respects natural morality and religion ; the spirit and design of Christianity ; and its speedy obscuration after the first age of the church .
** Christianity is a purely religious doctrine . It consists solely and entirely of religious truth . Philosophy and science are foreign to its design . In the Christian Scriptures there is nothing of a scientific tendency . On the contrary , they shew what is very remote from the spirit of philosophical inquiry , a disposition to abstract contemplation , and faith in supernatural influences . After the lapse of the two first centuries , when Christianity had spread through the different nations of antiquity , an d was now b rou ght into contact
and correspondence with their philosophical views , a remarkable agitation arose in the Christian world , which threatened the community of Christians hitherto united among themselves with intestine divisions . A number of conflicting parties appeared , each striving to give a philosophical structure to Christianity . The Christian faith , which had shewn till now that it
contained a princi p le of union , and which still shewed it in what was purely reli g ious , lost < tns virtue when it was invaded by the sophisms of a foreign p hilosophy . It included within itself no philoso p hical doctrine which , by its absolute authority , could impose peace on conflicting opinions . Disputes multiplied , the strife was extended without limit , and it issued in violent divisions . The entire history of the church presents a series of such pic-
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1831, page 268, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2596/page/52/
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